


Developmental Beta: Following the Hero's Journey

by Developmental_Beta (Emmessann)



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Original Work, Star Wars - All Media Types, Supernatural, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Beta-Reading, Christopher Vogler, Developmental Beta, Gen, Hero's Journey, Inner Journey, Joseph Campbell, Meta, Michael Hague, Outer Journey, Writing, editing, monomyth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-28
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3246422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmessann/pseuds/Developmental_Beta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hero's Journey can be a valuable tool in beta-reading fanfic. These essays explain the Hero's Journey from a fanfic perspective, using detailed examples from several major fandoms. </p><p>Most of our best-loved canons follow this same journey. Why is it so important to us?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction: How I Joined the Journey

This essay is part of a [series](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmessann/pseuds/Developmental_Beta) about beta-reading fanfic in the developmental editing style. My topic is to illustrate how stories follow a pattern by applying the Hero's Journey. For me, this was the foundational skill that helped me crack beta-reading, and my overall understanding of story structure, wide open.

In fiction writing, I had some specific problems that made the Hero's Journey especially helpful to me. My issues, in bullet points:

  * I am a very big-picture thinker. If I can’t take in the whole forest, I will not pick up even the basic concept of trees without help. I will get lost, and stuck, and frustrated.

  * Contrariwise, once I have comprehended my first forest, you can show me a handful of acorns and I’ll be able to sketch out the mighty oaks from there. Mostly, I do this with people. 

  * I am terrible at trusting a process to work itself out after I've started, and simply bulling my way through until it’s done. If I need to take a journey of a thousand miles, and I've never actually taken a single step before, I’ll struggle to move forward at all. The more I can map out the whole journey ahead of time, the more effective I’ll be.




So this is my deal. The big-picture skills are quite nice. But when it comes to starting a big, unfamiliar (thus: scary) project like writing or editing a story, I am in serious trouble.

One implication of this was that, although I have read compulsively and consumed an ungodly amount of television since early childhood, I couldn’t get a grip on the beats that make a functional story. I had no feel for what makes a story _a story_ and not just a jumble of characterizations and anecdotes. The latter is what I would get when I tried to write.

I desperately wanted to write fiction. But my single steps had no structure, and I didn’t have the staying power to keep pushing through my terrible, unfocused prose to see if it got better in the end. I simply didn’t finish at all. Soon enough, I didn’t start.

For me, fanfiction and beta reading represented a chance to get involved with story despite my limitations. Beta reading was especially exciting. I had read many stories that I loved but still knew could be better. If I could help someone else, maybe I had a place in story after all.

My skills as a beta took off after I stumbled upon a tool that helped me get my arms around the entire forest at once.

The tool was the Hero’s Journey. One straightforward template that outlines many of the most enduring stories in Western civilization, from the ancient classics to the latest Marvel movie. After I’d seen the pattern once, I could see it everywhere.

The Hero’s Journey is my first map of the world of story, and the one I treasure most. It’s allowed me to look at a thousand different fanfic trees, and comprehend their place in the forest. Now, I'd like to share what I've learned about it with you.


	2. There and Back Again: The Hero's Outer Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an outline of the Hero's Outer Journey, the action/adventure out in the world that many popular heroes experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plots of _Star Wars: A New Hope_ , _Supernatural_ seasons 1-5, and _Guardians of the Galaxy_ are spoiled in this section.

Many of you have encountered the Hero’s Journey in school, or run across it in TV Tropes. But to give us a shared understanding, here’s a summary of the version I use:

The Hero’s Journey is the name used by mythology scholar Joseph Campbell to describe the "monomyth", a pattern of story that appears in numerous cultures and historical periods around the world. 

(I don't actually use the Campbell journey; mine is adapted from a streamlined version for screenwriters I'll link to later.)

The Hero’s Journey has two dimensions, an outer and an inner. While most heroes will go through parts of both journeys, it’s easier to consider them separately.

**The Hero’s Outer Journey**

The Hero’s Outer Journey is basically the story of an individual, the hero, leaving the familiar, ordinary world because of a desire or need. In pursuit of that need, the hero ventures out into a special story-world where things are different from home. The hero makes friends and enemies, encounters obstacles and devises ways around them. At the climax of this effort the hero has a do-or-die moment that determines whether the hero will satisfy the need. A successful hero may head back to the ordinary world to share the reward with the folks back home, or settle into a new home in the special world, making it the new ordinary. Either way, the hero is forever changed and better prepared for the next adventure.

I am leaving out a lot of details and variations -- there’s a lot to this. I find it easier to understand if I look at how several different stories line up with some of the stages of the journey. 

 _Star Wars: A New Hope_ is, famously, basically constructed from the Hero's Journey and some tracing paper.

In _Supernatural_ , Sam Winchester follows the Hero’s Journey from the pilot through the first five seasons. (Dean and Cas are heroes, but their stories are not written in the Hero's Journey mold.)

 _Guardians of the Galaxy_ is a lovely example of an ensemble taking the journey individually and together.

So here we go:

**The hero begins in the Ordinary World.**

> Luke Skywalker is in the desert, on the family dirt farm, dying to get away.
> 
> Sam Winchester is at Stanford, being perfectly ordinary with his ordinary friends.
> 
> The kid who will be Star-Lord is home in his cow town, watching his mother die, preparing for a colorless existence with Grandpa.

**The hero receives a Call to Adventure.**

> Luke finds an urgent message from Princess Leia. “Help me, Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope.”
> 
> Dean Winchester breaks into Sam’s apartment and greets him with a good-natured flying tackle and a problem. “Dad’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home in a few days.”
> 
> The kid who will be Star-Lord is kidnapped by unexpected space pirates.

**The hero, typically, Refuses the Call.**

> Luke's ready to blast off, but he can’t ditch his aunt and uncle.
> 
> Sam scoffs that his dad is just on a drunk.  He agrees to help his brother on one minor case, but then it's back to Stanford and his beautiful life.
> 
> No one refuses space pirates! Adult Star-Lord goes through a small series of calls, refusals and acceptances which culminate in the knowledge that his stolen mystery orb is super-valuable if he can just hang onto it.
> 
> (Notice that every other Guardian except possibly Groot comes from a variation on this same dark and isolating backstory. All are antisocial and extremely self-involved. Each undergoes a personal hero’s journey.)

**The hero transitions from the Ordinary World into the Special, usually via a distinct border zone.**

> Luke: via a Creature Cantina and a Milennium Falcon.
> 
> Sam: via the Impala, with Dean driving him away from his comfort zone and towards an adventure, bickering away. How did Sam ever leave all this?
> 
> Guardians: via their prison break, which forces them to grudgingly cooperate.

**The hero gets a taste of the Special World through an easily resolved mini-adventure, meeting companions and early obstacles along the way.**

> Luke has met all of his main companions for the trilogy and learned that the Force is his destiny by the time he first blasts into hyperspace. His mini-goal, Save the Princess, is quickly resolved. 
> 
> Sam joins in on the fun of “Saving People, Hunting Things” through the brothers' first one-shot case as a two-man team. But just this once. Just this once, _Dean,_ and then he's out.
> 
> The Guardians achieve their first goal, escaping prison with the orb, and head off to sell it and get rich. They have no trouble reaching their buyer.

**But just as the hero resolves the first mini-quest, a huge life-or-death  mega-quest looms. A goal so important the hero absolutely must succeed, or die trying.**

> Just as Leia is rescued, Darth Vader appears. Luke must bring the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance. What’s more, only Luke can destroy it.
> 
> Just when Sam’s back at home munching cookies, the demon who killed his mother kills his girlfriend, too, and burns down his home for good measure. Sam must find his father (season 1) to destroy that demon (s2) and all its evil plans (s5).
> 
> Just when the Guardians think they’ve reached their payday, they get their real mission: they must keep the all-powerful orb away from the main bad guy, or the whole galaxy is doomed. Within minutes, the bad guy has the orb.

**Now that the hero is absolutely committed, everything gets a lot harder. Many heroes face death at this point.**

> The moment Luke gets his mega-goal, Darth Vader kills his mentor Obi-Wan. Luke’s challenges expand from escaping a trash compactor to personally destroying a planet-sized death machine.
> 
> Dean sells his soul for Sam, (s2) and when Sam can't save Dean from hell (s3) he goes darkside and becomes a demon blood addict (s4) ignoring even the angels who caution him from his path. Oh, and he personally starts the Apocalypse. Oops.
> 
> The Guardians face various insurmountable odds. Though allied with Good (pilots) and Bad (pirates), the fight for the galaxy comes down to them. The motley crew of selfish individuals make a pact that if they have to die trying, they're all willing to go.

**Climax. Time to give everything to achieve the goal, and/or die trying.**

> Luke uses the Force to destroy the Death Star. Goal achieved.
> 
> Sam sacrifices his life to end the Apocalypse (s5). Goal achieved, died trying.
> 
> The Guardians make a sequence of sacrifices. Groot sacrifices himself to protect the group. Emboldened, Star-Lord accepts his own death (and makes peace with his mother's) by seizing the orb. The rest of the Guardians join him and share his death, which unites them fully and saves them all. Star-Lord uses their combined, now vastly increased power to destroy the enemy. Goal achieved, all-but-died trying.

**There is some kind of reward for the hero’s success and/or sacrifice. The benefits usually spread far beyond the hero. We spend a little time in the new world created by the hero’s journey. There may be a suggestion of the next adventure.**

> The Rebel Alliance is saved from the Death Star. Luke gets a medal and a new lease on the Force. He has many mysteries left to resolve.
> 
> The planet is saved from the Apocalypse; Dean and Cas are rewarded with new, theoretically better lives. Dean’s domesticated contentment is exactly what Sam originally wanted for himself back at Stanford and now gives to his brother. We see that Sam is somehow alive, and watching. (This concluded _Supernatural’s_ use of the Hero’s Journey for major arcs.)
> 
> The galaxy is saved, as we’re shown on large scale with the military government, and intimate scale with John C. Reilly's family. The Guardians are rewarded with the knowledge that they are no longer selfish loners, but a seamlessly bonded group of friends. Plus, dancing baby Groot.

So, that's the Hero's Outer Journey. It's the adventure plot, the story of how the hero takes on the world. A lot of very satisfying action-oriented stories, starring heroes who are not much given to introspection, take place almost entirely in the Outer Journey.

But navel-gazers can be heroic too, so the next section explains the parallel Inner Journey. 


	3. Be All That You Can Be: The Hero's Inner Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some heroes change the world. For others, it's enough to change themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot of _X-Men: First Class_ is discussed in this section.

So in the previous chapter, that adventure plot about an individual interacting with the world can be called the Hero’s Outer Journey. There is also an Inner Journey, an internal battle where the hero fights personal demons to become a new type of person. Written out, the Inner Journey matches the Outer Journey point for point; many heroes walk through both journeys at the same time.

I’ll use “he” to describe the hero of the inner journey, but any hero can take either journey, or both. I’ll go through a specific example in a moment, but you can see how this description matches up with Princess Fiona in _Shrek_ or John Watson in the _Sherlock_ pilot, who are both mostly inner-journey characters.

**The Hero's Inner Journey**

The basic idea of the Inner Journey is that the hero is not being the authentic person he should be. Long ago he suffered a physical or psychic wound that has never healed, and he has constructed a shell identity to protect that wound from ever being hurt again. The shell is effective protection, but it’s limiting and creates its own problems. Notably, by hiding behind the shell the hero can’t fully develop the strengths of his true self.

The hero is aware that something is missing but denies it, too frightened to go after what he really wants. A call to adventure draws the hero just a bit out of his shell, using his true gifts to solve a small problem, but he quickly retreats back in. However, the hero discovers a desire that can only be won by embracing his authentic self (which is also called his “essence.”) You can see what the hero needs to do by filling in the sentence “I’ll do anything in the world to achieve this goal. But don’t ask me to do X, because That’s. Not. Me.”

Now that the hero is pursuing his main desire, events get harder and force the hero farther and farther out of his shell. At a climactic moment, the protective identity is destroyed beyond repair; the hero can never go back to it. Instead, he’s forced to do whatever it takes to heal the wound and live as his authentic self -- or die trying.

Some characters’ stories are written almost entirely in the Inner Journey. My favorite recent example is Mystique in _X-Men: First Class,_ so in brief here’s how her Hero’s Inner Journey looks.

**The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Including Rebecca Romijn: Mystique's Inner Journey**

Mystique is born in her true self, blue and scaly and strong. She’s deeply wounded by the rejection she finds wherever she goes. Once Charles Xavier adopts her as his sister and helps her hide her truth, she never wants to go back to the despised blue self who can be hurt again. Life will be better if she abandons Mystique for “Raven”, and wears a permanent Jennifer Lawrence mask.

This shell identity works for years, but Mystique starts to chafe at the restrictions. Raven’s facade requires constant energy and attention, and maintaining the disguise saps her resources. She can blend in, but as Raven she can never risk showing her true strength and ability.

Though Charles and Beast, brother and first love, both care for Mystique, they don’t accept the real her. They both see Mystique’s true self as a problem to be solved. Charles makes constant, unthinking rejections, paternalistically assuming his protection is for the best. Beast is caught up in his own wounds and thinks they’ll both be happier “cured” of their differences. Both men would rather embrace Raven’s false identity forever, than face Mystique’s scaly blue truth.

Magneto, though made cruel and selfish by his own, different set of wounds, is their exact opposite. He’s comically disinterested in Raven’s beautiful shell. When he looks at Mystique, he doesn’t see beauty or scales. He sees her power: the incredible talent and strength that Mystique has suppressed to fit in with humans. Magneto urges Mystique to put Raven aside and live in her essence. He doesn’t want her to be anyone other than the strong, smart, amazingly gifted woman she was born to be.

Although plenty of other stuff is going on, this story is the heart and spine of the movie, as Mystique is torn between these two worlds. By the time she’s forced to choose, it’s inevitable that she stays with Magneto. Despite his flaws, he fully accepts her as she was meant to be, and with him Mystique claims her true identity.

***

So, that's Mystique's Inner Journey, which maps right alongside Xavier's and, especially, Magneto's Outer Journeys, although all three characters have elements of both. Xavier, the most facile hero of the first movie, walks a hardcore Inner Journey of his own in the sequel as he comes to terms with the loss of abilities and people he'd taken for granted. So far, this series has done a nice job of portraying that a hero will walk many journeys at different times, and that characters can play varied, changing roles in one another's stories.

Because they share so many elements with mythology, superhero comics and fantasy quests are almost irresistibly bonded with the Hero's Journey. For better or worse, the Journey is exactly why no superhero series goes very many installments before it reboots and has the fun of telling the origin story again.

One more journey by an accidental hero to go... 

 

 

 


	4. A Final Journey: Finding the Heroic in the Mundane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter sums up the Hero's Journey with an example in an everyday setting.

I’m sure many people reading this have encountered this material before, without turning it into a personal religion. So why did I? To explain it, I have one more journey to share.

Long, long ago, in a suburb excitement forgot, a young woman called Ann was languishing at home after moving in with her parents. Again. She taught courses part-time, watched TV with her story-loving mom, and went through the motions of an ordinary life.

One day, through a series of remarkable coincidences, Ann found a want ad from Japan, looking for a teacher with her exact qualifications. She applied for the job, and six weeks later had a ticket to Tokyo. Though she spoke no Japanese, and her sister privately assumed that timid Ann would be back home within a week, she accepted the job and the challenge.

For several weeks, Ann settled in quite happily. Tokyo was surprisingly reminiscent of New York, and her co-workers spoke flawless English, helping her navigate with unfailing kindness.

The first shock came about six weeks in, when Tokyo experienced its biggest earthquake of twenty years. Although this was not an especially destructive quake, Ann was stranded in the upheaval for several hours. She was frightened to realize how little she could actually manage on her own.

Indeed, for many months afterward Ann channeled most of her culture shock into a significant fear of earthquakes. Some scary facts about earthquakes, which preoccupied her on every walk home, are that they can never be predicted and can strike at any time. The first signs are too subtle to feel, and by the time the strongest tremors start it’s impossible to run. An earthquake could have started right now, and Ann wouldn’t even know it until the end of this sentence.

Life was otherwise quite pleasant, with each day bringing its small novelties. At her father’s prodding Ann took many pictures and occasionally shared them with her family over Skype, narrating each little discovery. Eventually, she traveled home to her family for the best Christmas ever. Every sibling was employed and content, and making their own progress. They pooled to get their mother an iPod for her audiobooks, and collectively felt functional and adult. Her parents, nearing retirement, looked forward to travel and adventures of their own. Although Ann’s mother had had a mild cough for some time, she was resolved to see her doctor and take care of herself.

Ann returned to Tokyo when, from out of nowhere, she was struck by a seismic upheaval. Her mother, who had never smoked, whose family history suggested she would live into her nineties, had terminal lung cancer. The cancer had started too quietly to detect, and now that it showed symptoms it was far too late to cure. Her whole family was shaken off its moorings. Ann’s only certainty was that her mom had less than a year to live.

Ann flew home immediately, drowning in tears. It was clear what she had to do in this crisis: return to Japan only to pack, and move home to stay with her mother until the end.

Her mom was surprisingly fit when Ann arrived, listening to Discworld on her iPod and weeding. She also issued an order, firm and clear: Under _no circumstances_ was Ann to quit and come home. Ann’s most helpful and pragmatic sister, the one most like their mother, was already doing that. Ann, her mom was too kind to say, was more likely to sit around weeping without any health insurance, which was not what her mom wanted for her.

Or _from_ her, because Ann’s mom had a mission in mind:

"Go back to Japan. Go back to your job and your adventures and your life. Don't grieve before you have to. You'll know when it's time to come home.

And when you find those adventures, savor them. Take all the pictures you can. Live as fully as you can. 

And every night you’ll call me, and tell me the story of your day."

Ann accepted the challenge, and returned to Japan with renewed purpose. She sought out more adventures than she ever had before. (Especially gardens, for her mom loved gardens best of all.) She became bolder and lost some inhibitions, snapping a photo of anything her mom might like to see.  

And as she promised, Ann sent home pictures and stories from Tokyo every single night, for the rest of her mother’s life, until it was time to return home to her again. And even after her mom was gone, Ann found her own healing by seeking out even more adventures (and gardens) she wished she could have shared. Somehow, it felt as though she still was, for Ann never stopped telling her mother stories.

On her very first trip back to work, after that first visit home where she received her mom’s request, Ann was listening to an [audiobook* ](http://www.amazon.com/Using-Myth-Power-Your-Story/dp/1880717557)about using the Hero’s Journey for screenplays. The concept made sense to her in a way that other writing books never had. She learned about the Call to Adventure, and the small crisis that gets resolved just as the real goal appears. (After her mom’s diagnosis, Ann never worried about earthquakes again.)

Then she got to the explanation of how the hero’s mission is often to find a Healing Elixir in the Special World and bring it back home to the Ordinary, where loved ones are suffering. And that’s when it clicked.

“Holy SHIT,” I said. _“I’ve been living the Hero’s Journey this whole entire time!”_

***

And that’s how this story became so important to me. This is what I think: We don’t love the Hero’s Journey because it’s a good yarn. Or because it’s so familiar from Hollywood’s endless repetition. We don’t love the Hero’s Journey because it’s about made-up Heroes who are braver, stronger, completely different from us.

It’s backwards to say “I love this because it’s the story of Odysseus, and Spider-Man, and virtually every work of fiction that has inspired more than a few dozen fanfics on Ao3.” That’s not why we love the Hero’s Journey. Not because it IS a story.

We love it so much because we ARE this story. Because this story is made of _us_. Every one of us will live out variations on this pattern, many times. We are all the heroes of a hundred hero’s journeys, sometimes just as clear-cut and quest-like as the personal one I’ve described.

We all encounter times of change and challenge. We are all scared to take risks and be the person we wish to be. But sometimes we set ourselves to risk it all, and if we succeed, then the rewards will look a lot like the rewards that heroes receive. Because we are the heroes.

That’s kind of a high note, so I think I’ll go out here. Next time, I’ll have more specifics about the ways that I apply this knowledge to beta-reading. Because believe me: from the moment I had that epiphany, heading into Shibuya on the Hanzomon Line, beta was never the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * "Using Myth to Power Your Story," a three-hour workshop taught by Christopher Vogler and Michael Hague.
> 
> All Developmental Beta content is mirrored on my [Tumblr](http://developmental-beta.tumblr.com) along with more information about my current fandom and freelance work.


End file.
